Lithuanian wins women's modern pentathlon, final gold

Lithuania's Laura Asadauskaite used a strong performance in the combined running and shooting competition to win gold in the women's modern pentathlon Sunday, the final event to end at the London Olympics.

Asadauskaite finished with 5,408 points to set an Olympic record, while Great Britain's Samantha Murray took silver in the event, finishing 52 points behind.

Her silver gave the host country a 65th and final medal. The British finished with the third-most gold medals (29), and the fourth-most overall.

Brazil's Yane Marques earned the bronze, while the United States' Margaux Isaksen was fourth.

Asadauskaite, ranked No. 1 in the world, won 23 of her 35 fencing matches to earn the third-highest score after one part of the competition. Latvia's Elena Rublevska had the highest mark in fencing, but turned in the 32nd-best time in the next event, the 200-meter freestyle swim.

Asadauskaite was 17th in that event after posting a time of 2 minutes, 18.67 seconds. Hungary's Sarolta Kovacs set a modern pentathlon Olympic record by swimming 2:08.11, but was already far down on the results table because of a poor fencing performance.

The competition then moved to Greenwich Park for the final events -- show jumping, and the running/shooting combined.

Competitors aren't familiar with their horses until shortly before the show jumping begins, and Asadauskaite did well aboard All Rise. She had the second- most amount of points and, after that event, was tied for the lead with Marques -- who had gotten top-10 scores in the first three competitions.

They began first in the running/shooting combined, when start times are staggered based on the standings to produce an exciting finish. The first athlete to cross the line wins.

Asadauskaite wasn't the quickest through the shooting portions, taking 56.09 seconds to complete the three shooting portions, which were each followed by a 1,000-meter run.

But the Lithuanian was a much faster runner than Marques, taking 10:59.55 to complete the 3km, compared to 11:32.20 for the Brazilian.

Asadauskaite finished 17 seconds ahead of Marques, who was then passed by Murray for second place.

Great Britain's Mhairi Spence, the reigning world champion, finished 21st.